nse of smell. He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time to
get the best bone. Besides, just look at the two men. The one has
a sharp-pointed face like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is
cubical, fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist. Nucingen
has a thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up; his depths
are not in front, but behind; he is inscrutable, you never see what he
is making for. Whereas du Tillet's cunning, as Napoleon said to somebody
(I have forgotten the name), is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks."

"I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over du Tillet,"
said Blondet, "unless it is that he has the sense to see that a
capitalist ought not to rise higher than a baron's rank, while du Tillet
has a mind to be an Italian count."

"Blondet--one word, my boy," put in Couture. "In the first place,
Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a question of appearances;
and secondly, to know him well you must be in business yourself. With
him banking is but a single department, and a very small one; he holds
Government contracts for wines, wools, indigoes--anything, in short, on
which any profit can be made. He has an all-round genius. The elephant
of finance would contract to deliver votes on a division, or the Greeks
to the Turks. For him business means the sum-total of varieties; as
Cousin would say, the unity of specialties. Looked at in this way,
banking becomes a kind of statecraft in itself, requiring a powerful
head; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set himself above the
laws of a morality that cramps him."

"Right, my son," said Blondet; "but we, and we alone, can comprehend
that this means bringing war into the financial world. A banker is a
conquering general making sacrifices on a tremendous scale to gain ends
that no one perceives; his soldiers are private people's interests. He
has stratagems to plan out, partisans to bring into the field, ambushes
to set, towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so close upon the
borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn into public life,
and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker, for instance, was
ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined. Some
great capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune, and leaves
behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was the firm of Paris
Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law
himself (b